Take time to look at the story of the prophet Samuel’s first encounter with God that we find in our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures. What can we glean from Samuel’s experience to apply to our lives today? Perhaps the first thing we notice is that, like Samuel, we don’t always recognize God’s voice calling to us. What we might expect the Beloved to sound like or to say to us may be very different from the way God speaks in our lives, so our minds remain closed, our hearts hard. Fortunately for us and for the world, God perseveres. The Holy One continued to call Samuel until the boy was led to respond, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Listening requires paying attention and then responding faithfully to what we hear. No doubt, Samuel didn’t want to face Eli the next morning, but he did—he took that first step toward becoming “a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.” Maybe our first step in listening for God’s word is to accept that God is always reaching out to us to get our attention and having done so, then opening our hearts and minds to be receptive to whatever may come, however it may come. Once the Beloved sees our ready and willing response, the ears of our hearts will be opened to what God had prepared for us.

It helps if we have the desire to hear God’s word, if we dispose ourselves daily in expectant, quiet waiting, trusting that God’s comfortable, challenging, encouraging, calling and sending words will come to us. In the fullness of time, at the appointed time, each of us will hear God calling us by name.